Honoring the Killers

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I. SUMMARY

In 2003, a man fatally stabbed his daughter twenty-five
times because she refused to tell him where she had been following a three-week
absence. In 2002, a man killed his sister after seeing her "talking to a strange
man during a wedding party." In 2001, a man killed his sister "after seeing a
man leave her house." In none of these cases, nor dozens more such "honor"
killings in Jordan
in recent years, did the perpetrators serve more than six months in prison. Unfortunately,
neither the violent killings nor the weak response to these crimes are
exceptional.

In
Jordan today, as in many
other countries in the Mediterranean and
Muslim worlds, "honor" killings of girls and women by their male relatives
remain among the most prevalent physical threats to women. It is the most
extreme form of domestic violence, a crime based in male privilege and
prerogative and women's subordinate social status. Although the absolute number
of murders is not high (though the numbers are very likely underreported), the
effects are felt throughout society. "Honor" killings are the most tragic
consequence and graphic illustration of deeply embedded, society-wide gender
discrimination.

In Jordan, a woman's life is at risk if she engages in
"immoral or shameful" acts, such as talking with a man not her husband or a
blood relative (even in a public place), or refusing to tell a close male
relative where she has been and with whom, or marrying someone of whom her
family does not approve: in short for doing or being imputed to have done anything
that, in traditional terms, is perceived to bring sexual dishonor on herself
and therefore on her family. Male relatives may beat, shoot, stab, or otherwise
physically harm an accused woman, with the approval of both her family members
and large sections of the general population. Police rarely investigate "honor"
killings, seldom take any initiative to deter these crimes, and typically treat
the killers as vindicated men. The police also routinely force threatened women
to undergo painful and humiliating virginity examinations at the request of
their families in order to determine whether their hymens are intact.

Many women who are threatened by family members end up
imprisoned for their own safety. The perverse reality is that while many
perpetrators of "honor" crimes walk free, many would-be victims end up
incarcerated. Human Rights Watch spoke to women who had spent as many as ten
years in prison; some were planning to remain in prison until the family
members who threatened them died or left the country.

There is no law in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan granting
a man the right to kill a female relative whom he believes has dishonored the
family. However, "honor" killings in Jordan rarelycarry a sentence of more than one year of
imprisonment. Under article 98 of the penal code, this can be reduced to six
months if the victim's family waives charges against the perpetrator. Indeed,
it is common for killers, having freely admitted their crime and served six or
more months awaiting trial, to leave the courtroom as free men immediately
after being found guilty. While there is some evidence of greater sensitivity
in recent years, the courts still routinely accept a killer's excuse that he
acted out of "fury" and diminished capacity-even when the murder occurs weeks
after the alleged offensive act-and are willing to consider the slightest
gestures of female autonomy as provocations tainting family honor.

Jordanian women's rights activists have tried to reform laws
that protect family members who commit "honor" killings. However, the lower
house of Parliament has blocked these efforts, along with other legislative
proposals that would begin to equalize women's status under Jordanian law. At
the same time, Jordan's
obligations under international human rights law require that women be treated
equally under the law and that women's physical integrity be protected.

Human Rights Watch visited Jordan in July 2003 and
interviewed women under threat of death from their relatives-all were
incarcerated in Amman's Jweideh Women's Correctional and Rehabilitation Centre,
the only refuge available to them-as well as government officials, human rights
activists, police officers, judges, and Islamist political figures. We found
that although elements of the Jordanian government and the royal family have
supported reform, "honor" crimes in Jordan remain unresolved and
require urgent action. Already as of March 2004, four women have reportedly
been killed in Jordan
for reasons of family "honor."

This report first describes the social context in which
"honor" crimes take place, including the second-class status accorded to girls
and women in law and custom, systematic underreporting of domestic violence,
the lack of shelters or other places of refuge for women who have been
threatened, and the deference often accorded men who admit to killing their
female relatives. The report then presents four case studies of women under
threat from male family members, demonstrating the destructive, paralyzing
effect of Jordan's
continued weak responses to "honor" crimes on women's lives.After a close look at relevant legal
provisions, the report concludes with detailed recommendations.

Accountability
for perpetrators and protection for women and girls under threat should be
immediate priorities for Jordanian officials. Genuine accountability requires
that the Jordanian government amend or repeal provisions of the criminal law
that have allowed "honor" killers to avoid serious punishment and actively
combat continuing discrimination in the prevention, investigation, and
prosecution of "honor" crimes and attacks.Those who commit, endorse, or tolerate "honor" crimes and other violence
against women or girls should be appropriately penalized by the country's
judicial authorities. Victims of "honor" crimes and those who are at risk of
such violence and their dependent children should be provided with adequate
shelter. These women should not be forced into "protective custody" and should
be explicitly permitted to reside in shelters established for victims of
domestic violence. Because much of the discrimination that underlies "honor"
killings and the weak government response is deeply engrained within society,
an effective response will also include targeted training of police and judges
and aggressive public information campaigns.

II. BACKGROUND

Jordan's legal system is a fusion
of Islamic and tribal laws, European codes, and to a lesser extent,
international law, reflecting the country's diverse historical influences.[1]Although women are nominally granted equality
under Jordan's
constitution, some laws directly violate this guarantee by denying women full
legal competence. Multiple provisions in the penal, civil, and family law codes
subject Jordanian women to an inferior standing before the law despite the
existence of these constitutional guarantees. The existence of these
discriminatory laws increases Jordanian women's risk for violence.

Women's Status and Violence against Women

There are three basic sources of discrimination against
women in Jordan:
dependency and restrictions based in tradition and custom, conservative
interpretations of Islamic law sanctioning women's inferior standing before the
law, and various provisions in the secular law reinforcing women's low social
status and inequality. Among traditional restrictions is the widespread
requirement that a woman marry only with the approval of a male guardian.[2] Due to
custom, though no law requires it, the Civil Registry records only men as heads
of household; even if a deceased man is survived by his wife, the registry
considers his son the household's new head.[3]

According to a leading Jordanian interpretation, Islamic
law, shari'a, forbids an unrelated
man and woman to be alone together in a closed room.[4]Shari'a also defines extra-marital sex or adultery (collectively known as zina) as a crime punishable by 100 "medium" lashes for unmarried women or
men and stoning for married offenders.[5]But,
as many Jordanians pointed out to Human Rights Watch, the Qu'ran decries the beating of women by men, including wives by
their husbands. The persistent myth in Jordan surrounding domestic violence in
general, and "honor" killing in particular, however, is that if a woman is
sexually tainted-even if her sexual activity or rape is only suspected or
rumored-this humiliation extends to the family and is grounds for her relatives
to kill her without violating the Islamic prohibition against taking a life.

In secular law, too, the low status of women is reflected
and reinforced, with negative implications for a woman's physical safety in the
home and her ability to seek redress. For example, under the Personal Status Law, a
woman's testimony is worth half that of a man in court.[6]
A woman suspected of sexual indiscretion-but not a man-is subject to
interrogation and examination regarding her chastity.A woman does not have
secure custody of children born out of wedlock: these children are considered a
product of a "crime" and are placed in government care until their lineage is
established.[7] A divorced woman loses custody of her
legitimate children if she marries a man who is not related to the children.[8] Men
married to foreigners can pass on their Jordanian nationality to their
children, while Jordanian women married to foreigners cannot.[9] Many more
such distinctions and inequalities exist. Even when the rights of women or the
treatment due them are not explicitly differentiated, the law is often applied
more harshly to them than to men when customary attitudes about female sexual
conduct and family honor are at stake.

Women's second-class status, in Jordan as in many other countries, puts
them at risk for domestic violence.[10] Studies
by Jordanian sociologists and social-work professionals make clear that,
contrary to myths still widely believed throughout the country, domestic
violence cuts across socio-economic lines. Women in abusive relationships seek
help from hotlines when available, and many would leave home if they could, but
are frightened of reprisals and have no safe place to go.[11]

"Honor" killing is the most extreme form of domestic
violence.[12]
Murder to "cleanse family honor" is a variant of crimes committed against
women, with impunity, in many parts of the world.[13]
A family's honor is seen as being dependent on the sexual conformity of its
female family members. In part this means the virginity of its unmarried female
members and the chastity of its married ones. In this case, it is the family as
a whole, rather than an individual husband or partner, which perceives itself
as injured. Often, the perpetrators and their supportive neighbors conflate the
cleansing of family honor with a supposed duty under religious law.

In
2003, seventeen women were reportedly killed in Jordan in the name of "family
honor."[14]
As of March 4, 2004 four more women had already been murdered in Jordan by male
family members. The fourth woman to die this year, a married mother of two, was
shot to death by her older brother who thought she was having an affair.[15]
The third woman to die this year was seven-months pregnant. She was allegedly shot
five times by her brother because of her "illegitimate pregnancy."[16]

Violence
against women, including "honor" crimes, is a matter of concern to the royal
family of Jordan,
which has suggested that raising the status of women is key to ending such
violence as well as to economic development.[17] The
late King Hussein urged Jordanians at the opening of the 13th
Parliament in 1998 to shun inhumane practices that deprive women of their basic
human rights.[18]
King Abdullah II has not officially declared himself opposed to "honor" crimes
or to the legal provisions that support them, but rather has instructed his
government to "pursue [examine] laws that discriminate against women."[19]
The king has also said when asked about "honor" crimes that "there
needs to be more public awareness, more dialogue to reach to the grassroots,
clarify the issue, and change mindsets and misconceptions regarding women while
encouraging their full participation in public life as equal and valuable
partners."[20]Female members of the royal
family have been more outspoken on this issue.[21]Despite these calls, progress in reforming
discriminatory laws has been stalled.

The Lack of Reliable Statistics

Compiling reliable statistics on violence against women in Jordan
generally is difficult, because of the "private," protected nature of the
abuse.As one Jordanian women's group
reported in 1999:

A serious constraint to documenting the nature and extent
to which women are victims of violence is the absence of data and information
on the size of the problem. This data gap is due to the sensitivity of the
issue and under-reporting, linked to the fact that most of these cases fall
under domestic violence.[22]

Jordan
has one of the world's lowest rates of female homicide. However, a 1998 United
Nations study of official figures from the mid-1990s showed that, at that time,
murder was the most frequent crime against women and that "honor" crimes
(including murder, attempted murder, and "accidental murder") accounted for the
largest category 55 percent of all homicides of women.[23]
The study found that violence against women was not restricted to any one
social class, and that women were generally reluctant to report violence
especially if perpetrated by a member of the family, in part due to threats of
reprisal, in part because "routine legal proceduresare felt to be embarrassing
to women victims," and in part due to women's "belief in the futility of
reporting to the police."[24]

As serious as this problem appears from the official statistics
used by the United Nations, the actual situation is more acute. Exact, reliable
numbers are not available because-as the head of the nation's Public Security
Directorate, which oversees the police, acknowledged freely to Human Rights
Watch-crimes against women are under-counted in official statistics.[25] Undoubtedly
there are more "honor" killings than the average of fifteen per year that the
government has recorded since 1999.[26]
However, it is difficult to assess how many more, and therefore not possible to
determine what proportion of all killings of women in Jordan are related to family
"honor."

The Ministry of Interior's official statistics on murders
and "honor" killings as recorded by its Criminal Information Department range
from six "honor" killings (of a total 93 murders of men and women) in 1998, to thirteen (of a total of 84) in 2001,
to fifteen (of a total 125) in 2002.[27]TheJordan Times, the newspaper
that has tracked "honor" crimes most assiduously, has consistently reported
higher numbers than the government-for example, nineteen in 2001 and twenty-two
in 2002. The difference is partially due to the newspaper including supposed
accidents, suicides with suspicious features, and cases in which the
perpetrators originally admit to "honor" killing but later change their stories
at trial. Prosecutor General Sabr Yassin Rawashdeh, who reviews all murder
trials for error prior to appeal, agrees that some "honor" killers camouflage
their crimes as accidents or suicides. In an interview with Human Rights Watch,
he added that police investigations into the killings may be too superficial to
uncover the truth. The police sometimes investigate cases of theft more
seriously than "honor" killings: "[The policeman] looks for security cases
rather than social crimes."[28]

But the magnitude of the problem is not expressed by murder
statistics alone. Victims of "honor" crimes also include women-as many as forty
at a given time and sometimes far more according to some sources-who are
incarcerated for their own protection.[29]

The following examples illustrate how "honor" crimes
permeate the society, potentially affecting all women-rural and poor,
professionals, and the well-connected:

The current minister of state and the
official spokesperson for the government, Asma Khader, knows an
accomplished woman in her late twenties who held back from marrying
despite many suitors. The woman once explained why she had remained
single: an uncle had sexually abused her when she was eight-years-old and
she therefore was not a virgin and could not marry without risking
reprisals from her husband and family.It was suggested to her that she could have her hymen repaired,
through a simple surgical procedure that is not quite legal but not uncommon.In the course of the pre-surgical
examination, it was discovered that her hymen was intact. She was a
"virgin," so felt free (that is, safe) to marry, and in fact did so.[30]

The
nation's chief medical examiner, Mu'men S. Hadidi, a few days before an
interview with Human Rights Watch, had received for autopsy the body of a
young woman whose family he knew. The family, he was aware, had been
pressing her to marry a man she did not want. When she ran away with her
boyfriend, her relatives found and killed her.[31]

The coordinator of the government's Family Protection Unit,[32]who
is also a colonel in the police, told Human Rights Watch that he wanted to see
changes and reforms for the benefit of his own daughters.[33]
Other officials, however, have tended to minimize the problem.The secretary-general of the Islamic Action
Front party, Abdul Latif Arabiyat, a former speaker of the Parliament, said, "people
kill women in the street every night in the United
States more than in one year in Jordan."[34]General Tahseen H. Shurdom of the Public
Security Directorate considered that "only" fifteen killings per year, in a
country of five million, were "negligible in the context of a country of the
size and complexity of Jordan."[35]

TheJordan
Times reported in December 2002 that an unnamed nineteen-year-old woman,after being held in prison for alleged immoral behavior, was bailed out on
her uncle's promise not to harm her. Her brother killed her as soon as she
arrived home, and relatives were quoted as thanking God theywere "rid
of her."[36]Similarly,
in August 2003, The Jordan Times reported the case of a sixteen-year-old
girl from an Amman
suburbwho, released from administrative detention on her father's
promise that she would not be harmed, was murdered by her brother just minutes
after returning to the family's house.[37]

Sophisticated police work and crime-solving expertise are
rarely required to solve an "honor" crime. As a counselor at a women's center
told Human Rights Watch, "[The murder] is not an individual decision. It's the
decision of the whole family.[The
killer] feels supported."[38] The
killing is meant to be a public statement, and in many cases, perpetrators
freely confess. They may even act within earshot of the police, as in a case
reported to Human Rights Watch by the Jordanian Women's Union (JWU), an
independent grassroots organization: in December 2001, police in Amman found a
thirty-six-year-old woman who had previously come to the JWU for help; the
officers took her home, after her father's promise not to harm her; he shot her
while the police were still downstairs.[39]

Occasionally, an "honor" killer attempts to deny
responsibility. Relatives may contrive to place the murder weapon in the hands
of a minor, sometimes a child as young as eleven or twelve, who is not subject
to criminal punishment.[40]Jordan's prosecutor general, Sabr
Yassin Rawashdeh, described a 2003 case in which, after a girl's murder, her
fourteen-year-old younger brother "confessed."The police and the court accepted the confession, though other evidence
indicated that the victim's elder brother had actually committed the murder.
The child received the minimum sentence: rehabilitation in a juvenile facility
for three-and-a-half years. "When I reviewed the case, I said he didn't do it,
but it could not be appealed; it was a question of fact, not law."[41]

Or, as Rawashdeh explained, the killer may attempt to make
the killing appear to be an accident or suicide. He recounted the 2003case
of a girl from southern Jordan who had pre-marital sex, became pregnant, and
with her lover's help secretly had an abortion.At home afterward, she became ill, and her family took her to a doctor
who, not knowing she was unmarried, told her family she had been pregnant. On
the way home from the hospital, the family's car-with only the daughter inside
it-went over a cliff into a valley.Her
relatives reported her death as an accident, and the police and courts believed
them, but prosecutor Rawashdeh did not.[42]

Insufficient Responses to Threats made by Relatives

There is usually a period before the actual killing when the
woman's male relatives threaten her life verbally. Counselors at women's
hotlines, journalists, and women's rights activists all speak of this
circumstance as typical. Human Rights Watch interviewed four women in protective
custody who had sought refuge after being threatened.According to Director General of Public
Security Tahseen Shurdom, such threats are illegal and a male relative who
utters such threats is subject to prosecution. "If the woman tells us [of the
threats], we will do something," he told Human Rights Watch.[43] Human
Rights Watch was unable to confirm any instance in which a male relative had
been prosecuted or even detained for threatening to kill a woman in his
household over family honor. Rather, women's rights activists attest that
police ask an angry family, at most, to promise not to harm the woman if she is
left with them; as is evident from the cases summarized above, such promises
may be worthless.

There is a certain sense of inevitability in the attitudes
of some officials to the problem. For example, Judge Mohammed Al-Ghazoo told
Human Rights Watch, "They [the police] cannot arrest a man because of his
intentions."[44]However, it is not intentions that are at
issue, but credible threats of physical injury, which is criminal conduct in
any jurisdiction. The Director General of Public Security, when asked
his opinion on the deterrent value of arresting a threatening male relative,
said, "Even if he is imprisoned for threatening her, he will still do it [kill
her] when he gets out."[45]

There are no safe havens for women threatened by their
relatives. Women's groups do not have the resources to offer adequate refuge
outside the home for the number of women who face domestic violence.The government, despite years of promises,
has yet to create a shelter. In short, most women under threat from their
relatives cannot escape danger.Those
who are removed from the home for their own protection are placed in prison,
and may remain there for punitively long periods. Human Rights Watch is aware
of one women who has remained in prison for her own protection for ten years,
and several whose detention has lasted five or six years.

III. FOUR ILLUSTRATIVE CASES, 2003

Opportunities to interview women under threat of "honor"
killing are extremely limited, for obvious reasons.However, Human Rights Watch interviewed four
women who lived, for their own protection, in the Jweideh Women's Correctional
and Rehabilitation Centre in Amman,
the nation's sole penitentiary for women.[46]
The facility-clean and spacious, though barren-can house about 450 inmates, and
its population fluctuates. At the time Human Rights Watch visited, the
director, Police Major Hana Afgani, said it held 204 women.[47]
Of that number, ninety-seven were administrative detainees.[48]
Of those, between ten and sixteen were under threat of "honor" killing,
according to women we interviewed. One of them estimated that in recent years
there had been as many as forty women at a time in the facility under threat of
"honor" killing.[49]

N. Khalil

N. Khalil was
twenty-eight-years old at the time Human Rights Watch interviewed her.In 1998, she had secretly married an Egyptian
who was "not the same level as me."When her family found out, her
brothers beat her and then her father made a claim against her to the police;
she did not know the nature of the claim.

The police summoned N.
Khalilto the police station and ordered her to have a virginity
exam. She said it was not really possible to refuse, and she was never told the
result of the exam. The police then took her to stay for two days with a tribal
leader, after which she went to court.

It was her understanding that she had been charged with
"illegal marriage," that is, marriage without her family's consent. She had
been told that her husband had been deported to Egypt. She did not learn what happened
to the charge against her. There was no trial. The police sent her to prison to
protect her life.

N. Khalilbelieved
that her family would hurt her if she left the prison, but she nevertheless
wanted to take a chance, go out and try to find work: "This is not a life," she
said. Shortly before the interview with Human Rights Watch she had written an
appeal to the governor of Balka, her administrative district,[50] telling
him she did not know why she was being kept in prison. In 2002 he had
interviewed her and told her he would arrange for her to leave if she could
produce someone to guarantee her safety.She said to him at that time, "I have been in prison five years.How can I find someone?"He would not release her except to her
family.

M. Hassan

M. Hassan was twenty-five-years old at the time of the
interview, a native of the Zarkha district. She had been in prison since
1996.A Palestinian, she fell in love
with a Jordanian man when she was seventeen. After the two had become sexually
involved, they turned themselves in to the police because they wanted to get
married. The police notified her family and the governor of Zarkha.

When her father came to the police station and refused to
consent to their marriage, the police took her to a forensic doctor for a
virginity exam. She at first refused the examination, but the police told her
it was for her own safety.She felt she
could not say no.

After staying at the police station overnight, M. Hassan met
with the governor of Zarkha and told him she wanted to get married. Her father
still refused to consent. In the presence of the governor her father said, "If
you marry him or leave here, I will kill you."The governor tried to convince the father to relent, but when he
refused, the governor transferred her to the prison.

Two weeks before her interview with Human Rights Watch, M.
Hassan spoke to the governor again and told him she wanted to leave. The
governor called her family to see if they had changed their minds, but her father
made clear that he had not. She believed her mother felt the same way; no relative
had ever come to visit. The governor told M. Hassan that she could not leave
unless a male relative came for her. If she left alone, in defiance of the
governor, she did not know where she would go. Her father was sixty-four. "If
he dies," she said, "I can leave safely."

R. Ahmed

R. Ahmed was twenty-eight-years old at the time of the interview
and has been in prison since 1994. When she was eighteen, her family had made
her marry a cousin against her will. She then fell in love with a neighbor;
they made plans to flee to Syria.
Suspicious uncles followed them to a rented house, and when she refused to go
home with them, they shot her multiple times and left her for dead. (When we
interviewed her, the scars of the bullet wounds were still visible on her
shoulders and chest. She had required five months in a hospital to
recover.)

In the hospital, guards protected R. Ahmed, and her uncles
were not permitted to see her. Nevertheless, through an aunt, they convinced
her not to press charges against them. R. Ahmed believed that, if she relented,
they would also. But when she recovered and was sent to meet the administrative
governor of al-Salt, her home
province, her uncles were present, still vowing to kill her. The governor
deemed that her only choice was to go to prison. Her lover was later deported
to Lebanon.

R. Ahmed had since written several appeals to the governor
telling him she wanted to leave the prison in any way possible. Three months
before our interview, the most determined of her three uncles died and the
other two had subsequently said they would leave her alone. At the time of the
interview, R. Ahmed was awaiting her mother's return from a trip to Saudi Arabia
and expecting her family to come for her shortly. She did not believe that her
family would lure her from prison in order to kill her.

N. Hussein

N. Hussein,originally
from the Krak district,was thirty-one at the time of the interview and
had been in prison since 1997. She had fallen in love with an older, married
man and became intimate with him. The police learned of it, possibly through
her brothers, and they came for her. Charged with adultery, she confessed, and
the man went to prison for a year. She had appeared in court, and confessed
there also, but after six years in prison, she was not sure whether or not she
was serving a sentence.

Two months prior to the interview, her family had petitioned
the administrative governor of Krak district to have her released. She was
refusing to go, however, because one brother had told her that another brother
meant to kill her.She said that if she
could leave alone, and not return to the family home, she would.

IV. HONOR CRIMES UNDER JORDANIAN LAW

The Campaign against Article 340

Multiple provisions of the Jordanian penal code can and have
been applied by the judiciary to reduce penalties in "honor" crime cases. Article
340 has received the most attention in discussions focused upon legal
justification or excuse for crimes of "honor."Under article 340, any man who kills or attacks his wife or any of his
female relatives in the act of committing adultery or in an "unlawful bed"
benefits from a reduction in penalty.[51]Prior to its amendment in 2001, article 340 provided
complete exemption from penalty in certain circumstances, although it was
seldom invoked.[52] In an
effort to make this law "gender-neutral," a second clause was added in 2001
granting female attackers the same reduction in penalty.[53]

Women lawyers in Jordan first began to draw
attention to "honor" killings in the 1980s.[54]When the Jordanian government allowed some
political liberalization in the early 1990s, women's groups grew in strength
and number. The Jordanian Women's Union
established the first domestic violence hotline in 1994. Rana Husseini, a
journalist for The Jordan Times, began reporting on crimes that involved
"honor" in 1993. Her reporting helped bring further international attention to
the issue and, combined with grassroots efforts, increased domestic and
international pressure on the government to address the problem.

In 1999, the grassroots Campaign Against So-Called Honor
Killings created a movement quite unusual in Jordan: internally democratic,
carefully independent of the government or any political group, and directed by
women as well as men. Stressing the Jordanian constitution, Islamic law, and
international human rights principles, the campaign gathered some 15,000
signatures on a petition for repeal of article 340. The campaign cut across the
usual family, tribal, and communal divisions within the society, appealing to the
national good.After the campaign was denied
official permits to march in support of repeal, organizers were taken by
surprise when a member of the royal family announced a march for the cause.
Held in February 2000, the march, apparently convened by the Palace, drew 5,000
people in Amman.
Most of the participants were men; the women's organizations were not alerted.[55] Apparently
because the Palace had taken control of the issue, the campaign subsequently
lost momentum.

In 1999, spurred by local activists and international
attention, King Abdullah established a special committee to review and amend
gender-discriminatory laws. After the committee recommended the repeal of article
340, and the Council of Ministers, or Cabinet,[56]
approved the recommendation, the measure was presented to Parliament twice, in
November 1999 and January 2000, and in both cases, though approved by the palace-appointed
upper house, it failed to pass the elected lower house.[57]

In mid-2001, while the lower house of Parliament was
temporarily suspended, the Cabinet passed a number of "temporary" laws, subject
to parliamentary ratification once the new legislature convened. Among the
"temporary" laws were several granting equal rights to women on issues such as
nationality, passports, and retirement.[58]
In the case of article 340, the "temporary" law amended rather than repealed:
husbands would no longer be exonerated for murdering unfaithful wives, but
instead the circumstances would be considered as evidence for mitigating
punishment. And, in an apparent effort to mollify proponents of repeal, the
mitigation was extended to women as well as men.[59]For some, this resolved the moral dilemma.
Judge Ibrahim Abu Taleb, presiding judge of the High Criminal Court, told Human
Rights Watch that article 340 "used to be a violation of women's rights until
[it] was amended.Now it is not
exoneration but mitigation" and is no longer discriminatory.[60]

In September 2003, Parliament went into session with the
amended article 340 on its agenda for ratification. The upper house twice
approved the proposals, which were subsequently rejected by the lower house
again.As of mid-April 2004, the changes
in this law-and all the other "temporary" laws improving women's status-remain
pending.

There is a common understanding that article 340, as it
stands, does not conform to Islamic law. Jordanian officials and Islamists,
including the minister for Awqaf (religious endowments) and Islamic Affairs and
the secretary-general of the Islamic Action Front party, told Human Rights
Watch that Islam does not authorize a male family member to mete out punishment
to an errant female relative.[61]The provenance of the statute is said to
be the Napoleonic Code, brought to Jordan
via the Ottoman Empire.[62]Nevertheless, the Islamic Action Front and
other religious and cultural conservatives oppose repeal of article 340. They
argue that the campaign is motivated by western values of which they do not
approve.

Effective Exoneration: Article 98

The section of the penal code most frequently invoked on
behalf of perpetrators of "honor" killings is article 98. This statute mandates
reduction of penalty for a perpetrator (of either gender) who commits a crime
in a "state of great fury [or "fit of fury"] resulting from an unlawful and
dangerous act on the part of the victim."[63]It does not require in flagrante
discovery or any other standard of evidence of female indiscretion.If the extenuating excuse is established for
a crime punishable by death,[64] such as
premeditated murder, article 98 provides that the penalty be reduced to a
minimum of one year in prison. For other felonies, it is reducible to a minimum
of six months and a maximum of two years. Moreover, courts may further halve
the sentence if the victim's family "waives" its right to file a complaint of
the crime.[65] In
murders for "honor," given the family's complicity in the crime, the family nearly
always "waives" the right to file a complaint.[66]
Thus, "honor" killers may receive sentences of six months-and often do.If a killer has served that much time
awaiting trial, the sentence may be commuted to time served and he may walk
away a free man.

Though gender-neutral in language, article 98 in practice is
applied to benefit only men. "Honor" crimes which are plainly premeditated are
commonly considered by the Jordanian courts to have been committed in a "fit of
fury" as defined by the statute,[67] and the
courts accept as "unlawful and dangerous" even trivial challenges to
patriarchal authority. For example, a thirty-year-old man identified as Ziad H.who had murdered his divorced sister for being absent from the family home
for one week told authorities, "people started talking about us, so I decided
to kill her." A pathologist's report indicated that his sister, whom he stabbed
thirty times, had not been involved in sexual activity. The father of the
victim, who was also the father of the defendant, dropped charges. In January
2003, the murderer was sentenced to six months for the "honor" crime due to the
mitigation granted under article 98. Having served the time while awaiting
trial, he was freed.[68]

As the above example suggests, it is not necessary that the
murder be provoked by any actual proof of sexual indiscretion; in practice,
mere suspicion of a woman's "unlawful and dangerous" act-often called simply "a
bad act" for short-may be sufficient proof for the courts. Article 98 was
applied, for example, in a 2001 case in which the defendant had killed his
sister "after seeing a man leave her house."[69]
It was also applied in the 2002 case of a man who had killed his sister after
seeing her "talking to a strange man during a wedding party."[70]In 2003, a man fatally stabbed his
daughter twenty-five times because she refused to tell him where she had been, following
a three-week absence. The court, invoking article 98, reduced his sentence on
the basis of the act being committed in a "fit of rage."[71]

News reports also indicate that reacting to perceived stains
on family honor with violence will generally be found to have occurred in a
"fit of fury" even where substantial time passes between knowledge of the alleged
"bad act" and commission of the crime. Where a man killed his unmarriedcousin
one month after learning she was pregnant, the court found his "losing his
temper" was justified because she had "brought shame and disgrace to her family."[72]

In another reported case, a man heard his sister referred to
as a "slut" and confronted her. She told him to "mind his own business." He
went to bed, awoke the next morning and strangled her with a phone cord. The
High Criminal Court ruled: "It does not matter that the defendant killed his
sister hours after [learning of her supposed act].He was still under the influence of extreme
anger, which caused him to lose his ability to think clearly because of the
unlawful act committed by his sister."[73]

In a 2001 case, a brother visited his sister in a
hospital-she was being treated for burns-and she admitted to him that she had
had an affair and that she was pregnant.He left and bought a gun. Twenty-four hours later he returned and shot her
seven times at close range. As the court saw it, "although there were
approximately twenty-four hours between the time the defendant learnt of his
sister's illegitimate pregnancy [and the time he killed her], his soul was not
at peaceThe irritated soul does not know calm thinking. Therefore, he should
benefit from a reduction in penalty as stipulated in article 98 of the
Jordanian Penal Code."[74]

The reduction of sentence due to diminished capacity is a
common feature of penal codes around the world.But in the case of article 98, the man's "fit of fury" and the woman's
commission of a "bad act" are routinely assumed on the basis of the defendants'
accounts and their families' waiving of charges. Article 98 should not reduce
sentences for pre-meditated murder, no matter what has provoked it.

V. BETRAYING THE VICTIMS: THE OFFICIAL RESPONSE

The Police: Traditional Sympathies and Virginity
Examinations

Jordanian police are known for mistreating criminal suspects.
Prosecutor General Rawashdeh, for example, told Human Rights Watch that the
police routinely beat detainees to obtain evidence: "[The] accused are beaten
for evidence-I sent them to the forensic doctor-I would not take their
confession."[75] These
same police are also known for sympathizing with "honor" killers. As Asma
Khader, minister of state and government spokesperson, has said, when "honor"
killers turn themselves in to the police, the police "try to calm them down,
give them a cigarette.The culture deals
with them as heroes."[76]

Added to the bias in favor of men who commit "honor" crimes
is the virtual absence of training to deal with domestic violence. Currently,
only fifteen to twenty police officers per year receive any training on
domestic violence, according to Colonel al-Humoud, coordinator of the Family
Protection Unit (FPU) within the Directorate of Public Security. The training
lasts only a few days, too brief to be serious, and within the program there is
no material dealing specifically with "honor" crimes.[77]

Police frequently require threatened women to be examined by
a forensic doctor to determine whether their hymens are intact. Virginity exams
reflect the presumption that families, communities, and the state have a
legitimate interest in a woman's sexual conduct. They involve pain, humiliation,
and intimidation.[78] These
exams constitute cruel and inhuman treatment and are a violation of women's rights
to physical integrity, sexual autonomy, and privacy. The practice was common in
Jordan
through the end of the 1990s when even a hint of suspicion had been aroused. Dr.
Mu'men Hadidi, the nation's chief medical examiner, told Human Rights Watch
that police routinely sent girls and women for virginity examinations upon
their families' request without any evidence of sexual indiscretion. As he put
it: "The easiest way to answer him [the accusing relative] was to have the exam
and show that she did not have sex, to put the issue to rest."[79]

Now, according to Dr. Hadidi, the protocol has changed and
there must be evidence of a crime before a virginity exam can be required.This assertion was echoed by FPU Coordinator
Al-Humoud, who spoke of the need for "strong evidence" to trigger the exam.[80]

Not all officials believe that the practice has changed. Issa
Ayoub, legal advisor to the Public Security Directorate, told Human Rights
Watch that if a woman is found with a man who is not a close blood relative or
her husband-not necessarily in a compromising circumstance, but simply in the
man's company, even in a public place-the presumption continues to be that police
"have to send" the woman for a virginity examination, and that "circumstances"
would dictate whether such an examination was performed.[81]
According to FPU CoordinatorAl-Humoud, in circumstances involving an
unmarried woman, a virginity exam "will avoid a crime" and therefore "it is
good to do it."[82]

Human Rights Watch met with three police officers assigned
to the FPU who had received specialized training on domestic violence.[83] Two of
the three officers were women. Asked for their views on virginity examinations
in the absence of a complaint of sexual abuse by the woman, one of the female
officers said, "she should not be examined." The male officer said, "it's a
decision for the girl." The other female officer responded, "we should not open
doors to suspicion."[84]

Their superior, Colonel al-Humoud, was visibly surprised at
his three subordinates' "non-traditional" attitude. His version of what happens
when a woman protests being examined was that the police "tell her the
positives and the negatives." He added that, if a father or brother wished to
force a girl to have a virginity exam absent any complaint from her, "at a
personal level, I would refuse [coercion]. But in our society, it is very
complicated."[85]

The Family Protection Unit: Excluding "Honor" Cases

The Family Protection Unit was established in 1998 within
the Public Security Directorate with the mandate to protect women and children
from domestic violence. It was meant to establish a "close working relationship
between the police, social services, the judiciary, medical services, schools,
NGOs and others."[86] Although
women threatened with death for besmirching family honor were initially
expected to be part of the FPU's mandate, officials decided after only two
months of operation to exclude from its purview physical abuse of adult women
by a family member.As Colonel al-Humoud explained, the exclusion was
based on pragmatism: "There are no shelters in Jordan We need a safe house to
send [threatened women] to, but there aren't any.[We don't want] to lose the trust of Jordan
[by sending women to an unsafe place]."[87]
In other words, there is no point in saying the FPU will protect the women because
it cannot do so.

Inam Asha, a full-time counselor at a non-profit women's
center in Amman, Jordan, would agree with the thrust
of the director's argument. She has counseled dozens of threatened women over
the last fifteen years. When Human Rights Watch interviewed her she was
counseling two women whose relatives had vowed to kill them. Once a woman is
threatened by her family, Asha said, "there is a high probability of her
murder," not only because of the culture of impunity, but also due to a lack of
protective social services.[88]

The Ministry of Social Development: No Shelter,
Little Counseling

The Jordanian Women's Union (JWU), an independent grassroots
organization, runs a crisis hotline and a small, six-bed shelter in Amman, but it cannot
nearly meet the needs of women who are victims of domestic violence, including
women threatened to cleanse family honor. Women's rights activists have lobbied
for a safe shelter since their first conference on "honor" crimes in 1998.[89] Despite
repeated government promises to establish a shelter imminently, none yet
exists. Activists told Human Rights Watch the shelter issue has been political charged;
traditional elements in the government and parliament sympathize with the
killers and blame the victims, they said.As one activist put it, some officials support the idea of a shelter
merely because other countries have them, but are not willing to confront opponents
to create one.[90]

Legislation to create a center for victims of domestic
violence has been pending for many years, but it has been mired in much controversy,
including controversy regarding whether "honor" crime victims would be
included. The secretary-general of the
Islamic Action Front and Jordan's Minister for Islamic and Awqaf Affairsboth
denied to Human Rights Watch that they lacked sympathy for the victims of
"honor" crimes. Both expressed support for the pending proposal because it will
establish a "clean shelter," one in which the primary solution is understood to
be marriage for the woman and her re-acceptance into the extended family and
society.[91]"Your
nuclear family is not the way here," said the secretary-general of the Islamic
Action Front. "In Jordan,
the solutions are in the [extended] family."[92]

As of mid-April 2004, there is still no shelter in Jordan,
either for living victims of honor crimes or for victims of less lethal domestic
violence. One reason for the delay is the many changes in the leadership of the
Ministry of Social Development over the last several years.[93]
Virtually every ministry has had its say in the drafting of the law that will
make the first shelter a reality, probably by summer 2004, according to those
close to the process.The draft
legislation for a shelter was approved by the government and is awaiting the
king's signature.[94] The legislation
neither explicitly includes nor explicitly excludes honor crime victims from
the population eligible for access to the shelter, but, as a practical matter,
they are not expected to be included "for the present."[95]

The Department of Social Services, which comes under the Ministry
of Social Development, offers counseling for family reconciliation. For many
this can only mean marriage. If the man linked to the illicit behavior (or any
other man) can and will marry the woman, the problem may be regarded as solved.[96] Counselors
may also try to find someone in the family to diffuse the threat and work
toward a solution short of marriage. But reconciliation is rarely successful. Social
attitudes are entrenched and counselors are in short supply in Jordan.
The Department of Social Services has few psychologists;[97]
the JWU has only one, and other private groups are similarly understaffed.

Emigration, an extreme option, is hardly realistic, as most
women do not have passports and cannot get one in their own names without the
written permission of their husbands.[98]
Most also lack resources of their own or contacts abroad.Furthermore, as one women's counselor notes,
"sending women out of the country or hiding them is not legal, although these
things are [sometimes] done."[99] One
counselor told Human Rights Watch that she was trying to help a client get a
visa to Canada.[100] Human
Rights Watch heard no reports of women seeking refuge at foreign embassies in Amman.Another client had rejected the possibility
of seeking asylum in Syria
because of harsh living and working conditions there.[101]

The reality is that if a woman faces a credible threat,
there may be no alternative but to send her to the police for protection, and
then ultimately to prison.

Administrative Governors and the Jweideh Women's
Correctional and Rehabilitation Centre

Jordan
comprises twelve administrative districts, each headed by a governor who is
subject to the Interior Ministry but who exercises wide authority within his
district.[102] A
governor may, without process or review, detain and imprison any person to
protect the public safety.[103] When
confronted with a woman who has no safe place to escape her murderous relatives
and who has been sent to him by the police, an administrative governor often
exercises his power to send her to prison for her protection.[104]Then- Justice Minister Farisi Nabulsi told
Human Rights Watch that governors will send threatened women to prison "only in
exceptional cases."[105] But
another official and an experienced human rights advocate stated that, in the
"honor" context, governors opt for protective imprisonment as the norm.[106]

There are no accurate statistics on how many women live in
prison in Jordan
today for their own protection. According to Hana Afgani, the police major in
charge of the Jweideh Women's Correctional and Rehabilitation Centre,
ninety-seven inmates were administrative detainees in mid-July 2003, when we
visited.[107] Major
Afgani could not or would not tell Human Rights Watch how many of those
administrative detainees were in the prison in order to protect themselves from
family members. Eight were women who, having served a sentence for a crime,
were not being released "for their own safety." Major Afgani acknowledged that
the other eighty-nine administrative detainees had not been convicted of any
crime. It is unclear whether or not these detainees were ever criminally
charged.

According to other sources, most or all of the
administrative detainees were women in need of protection from their families,
but estimates of those under threat vary widely.Asma Khader, minister of state and government
spokesperson, visited prisoners at the Jweideh Women's Correctional and
Rehabilitation Centre four months before Human Rights Watch and said that at that
time there were approximately sixty such detainees.[108]One of the incarcerated women told Human
Rights Watch that there were now approximately sixteen such women though there
had been about fortyuntil recently.[109]

A woman incarcerated on the order of an administrative
governor may be released only with his consent.[110]As a matter of custom and practice, such
consent is given only when he deems it safe for her to leave and when a male
family member commits himself to be responsible for her. Asma Khader, minister
of state and government spokesperson, related that King Hussein himself had
signed out a woman prisoner in a particularly egregious 1998 case.[111] Human
Rights Watch was told that no law requires a male family member as opposed to a
female, but Major Afgani could not remember anyone but a male actually coming
for a released detainee.

When asked, most of the officials we interviewed said they
had no intention to follow the king's lead and act decisively to support
threatened women who are in prison. The president of the Court of First
Instance (trial courts), Judge Mohammed Al-Ghazoo, said, "I cannot overthrow
the social understanding overnight."[112]
Colonel Fadel Al-Humoud of the Family Protection Unit, though saying he would
favor allowing adult women detained solely for their own protection to decide
for themselves when and whether to leave the prison, said he would do so
publicly only "if there is support from other partners such as Parliament and
others for such a change."[113]

Ministry of Justice: Elusive Promises

Minister of Justice Farisi Nabulsi told Human Rights Watch
that it was his understanding that the imprisoned women did not want to leave the
Jweideh Women's Correctional and Rehabilitation Centre. Human Rights Watch told
him that the day before three of the four women interviewed had expressed their
wish to leave (if they could do so privately and quietly), without having to be
escorted by a male relative.The
minister, in response, said he would "send a woman judge" to the prison the
next day to verify if any of the women wanted to leave; if they did, he would
ensure that they were permitted to do so "privately and quietly."[114]

Human Rights Watch has since attempted repeatedly to verify
whether the minister did in fact follow up on this pledge. For six months our
inquiries have gone unanswered, both by the minister and by Jordan's ambassador to the United States.[115]
We have been told, however, by two sources following these events closely that
nothing has been done.[116]

The Judiciary

Among Jordan's
seven Courts of First Instance is the High Criminal Court, where all murder
cases are tried.There are twelve judges
on the High Criminal Court, sitting in panels of three. The first and only female
judge on the High Criminal Court to date, Taghreed Hikmat, served for one year,
2002-2003, before being appointed to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.[117]

The prosecutor general advises the Court of Cassation, Jordan's
highest court, whether there was legal error in the decision of the High
Criminal Court. The president of the Court of Cassation is appointed by the king
and serves as the country's chief justice.[118]
All death penalty cases are automatically appealed to this highest court, and
they are reviewed by the full court, which consists of seven judges.

Those who represent women in "honor" situations speak of a
systematic bias on the part of trial court judges. "Judges deal with these
kinds of crimes in a facilitating way, understanding the man," said human
rights lawyer Hani Dahleh.[119] A
counselor for women under threat of violence believes that judges need "rehabilitation"
in as much as they are "sons of the culture."[120]
And even Prosecutor General Rawashdeh believes that judges' thinking is biased
and traditional, saying they "don't need training, they need education."[121]

Human Rights Watch interviewed four judges who have sat on
the High Criminal Court concerning article 98 and their views on "honor"
crimes.[122] Judge
Mohammed Al-Ghazoo, the current president of the Court of First Instance,
stated that suspicion of a "bad act"-that
is, the "unlawful and dangerous act" set out in the statute-was not sufficient
to invoke protection under article 98; there had to be proof.But he and his colleagues made clear that
this did not mean proof of a woman's actual sexual misconduct. Nor was it
necessary that the victim commit an act that violated a law. Rather, the
appearance of misconduct, or a violation of religion or custom, is enough to
constitute an "unlawful and dangerous act," to besmirch family honor, in these
judges' opinion.[123] To
illustrate a sufficiently provoking act, Judge Ibrahim Abu Taleb, presiding
judge of the High Criminal Court, posed the following hypothetical case: a
brother hears that his unmarried sister is pregnant; she refuses to tell him if
it is true; and he kills her. If his suspicion is correct he benefits from article
98. If his suspicion were incorrect, Judge Taleb said, he could not benefit. However,
Judge Taleb considered that if a woman were "in a place where [her family's]
honor is affected," that is a sufficiently "bad act" to justify the application
of article 98.[124] When
asked if he was satisfied with the routine application of article 98,Judge
Al-Gazoo, said, "no, I am not satisfied." But, he added, "that is the culture
of the Arab world." And Judge Al-Gazoo himself opined that a woman who stays
out all night with a boyfriend has engaged in a provocation.[125]

Government officials and independent lawyers told Human
Rights Watch that the courts were beginning to show more sensitivitytoward
victims. In September 2002, for
example, the Court of Cassation overturned the trial court's application of article
98 in a case where the defendant killed his sister two months after learning of
her "wrongdoing."[126] (She had
sexual relations with a man she later married, but the brother did not approve
of the marriage.)Referring to this case, Prosecutor General Rawashdeh
said, "ten years ago, the Court of Cassation would have accepted the honor
excuse in [this] case. Now things have changed.We do not accept that honor excuses any crime." Judge Taleb also told Human Rights Watch
that "courts go overboard on the fit of fury defense and they [the Court of
Cassation] [now] send cases back."[127]

A prominent criminal defense attorney, Zahra al-Shourabati,
believes that in the past few years, even lower courts have begun to require
better proof of "fury" and "bad acts" than they did in the past. She cited a
case from 2000 of a boy who killed his sister based upon a letter from a friend
impugning her chastity; because of insufficient proof of a "bad act" on the
victim's part, he was not afforded the benefit of article 98. Ten years ago,
she said, his sentence would have been reduced.[128]
A women's rights activist also saw some evidence of progress: "When I am in the
courtroom, the judge questions the [prosecuting] witness more technically
regarding the relationship of the victim and other man."[129]Judge Hikmat, the only woman to serve on the
High Criminal Court, said: "Some of the judges in the past applied [article 98]
according to their own beliefs and culture.Now they do not.We started
applying it in a new way, a humanitarian way."[130]

Such observations are hopeful. On the other hand, in a case
decided in 2002, a man was given the benefit of article 98 although he acted
upon information in an anonymous letter.[131]
And in a 2001 case,the Court of Cassation reversed an "honor" killer's
ten-year sentence, consideringit too harsh. The man had murdered his
pregnant sister as she lay in the hospital following a suicide attempt.[132]

VI. JORDAN'S OBLIGATIONS UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW

Jordan
is a party to international human rights treaties protecting women and girls
from gender-based violence and discrimination.[133]
In 1975, Jordan
ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR),
which requires governments to ensure the rights to life and security of all
individuals in their jurisdiction, without distinction of any kind, including
gender.[134]In 1992, Jordan ratified the Convention on
the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW),
specifically assuming the obligation to protect women from discrimination and
gender-based violence perpetrated by both state and private actors.

By definition "honor" crimes are committed by private
actors. Nonetheless, states parties to CEDAW are still bound to protect women's
lives and physical security.General
Recommendation 19, adopted by the CEDAW Committee in 1992, reinforces this
principle, noting that "states may also be responsible for private acts if they
fail to act with due
diligence to prevent violations of rights, or to investigate and punish acts of
violence."[135]

Official
involvement in the forcible infliction of virginity exams violates guarantees
of freedom from discrimination found in CEDAW and the ICCPR.[136]
Such exams also violate provisions of the ICCPR and the Convention against
Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment ensuring
the right to bodily integrity.[137] When conducted against
the will of the girl or woman and with no medical justification, the
examinations are themselves a form of sexual abuse. They are degrading and intimidating,
both as a physical violation and for the threatened consequence of loss of
family honor.[138]

In
the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women, adopted in 1993,
the U.N. General Assembly affirmed states' obligation to protect women from
violence. The declaration explicitly provides that "states should
condemn violence against women [and] exercise due diligence to prevent,
investigate, and in accordance with national legislation, punish acts of
violence against women" and emphasizes that the declaration applies regardless
of whether acts of violence are perpetuated by the state or by private actors.[139]

International law addresses situations in which custom and
tradition interfere with the treatment of women as citizens and human beings
with the same rights as men. Under CEDAW, the government of Jordan has an
obligation to "modify the social and cultural patterns of conduct of men and
women with a view to achieving the elimination of prejudices and customary and
all other practices which are based on the idea of the inferiority or the
superiority of either of the sexes or on stereotyped roles for men and women."[140]

Furthermore, international human rights law guarantees women
the right to have control over and decide freely and responsibly on matters
relating to their sexuality free of coercion, discrimination, and violence.[141]
International protections for the right of women to sexual autonomy can also be
found in the principal of bodily integrity enumerated in ICCPR provisions on
liberty and security of person.[142]
Therefore, when a woman is severely punished for pre-marital sex, her right to
make free decisions regarding her body is violated.

VII. RECOMMENDATIONS

To the Government of the HashemiteKingdom
of Jordan

Protect the lives and physical integrity of women and girls by:

Examining
and amending all legislation that in intent or effect discriminates
against women and girls to ensure compliance with international human
rights standards, including gender-neutral statutes related to adultery
and premarital sex.;

Repealing
in full penal code article 340 (providing a reduced sentence for a male
who kills a female relative engaged in illicit sex);

Applying
penal code article 98 (providing a reduced sentence for someone committing
a crime in a "fit of fury") in a manner that is gender-neutral and that
does not presume "fury" or "bad acts" in cases involving alleged "honor"
crimes;

Repealing
legal provisions that allow family members to drop charges for "honor"
crimes;

Repealing
laws that condition a woman's release from detention or prison on her
being released to a male relative;

Ensuring
that women who are detained or in prison can be released on their own
recognizance and that they are fully protected after their release;

Ensuring
that all individuals in positions of de facto authority,including tribal or local leaders who
endorse or tolerate "honor" crimes and other violence against women or
girls, are penalized in an effective and appropriate manner; and

Continuing
to endorse, through radio, print, and other media, the government's
support for women's and girls' rights to equality in all aspects of their
public and private lives, including freedom from cruel, inhuman, or degrading
treatment.

Train police to prevent and investigate "honor" crimes more effectively and
humanely by:

Establishing,
from the top down, a commitment to pursue "honor" crimes on a par with all
other violent crimes-that is, to eliminate discrimination in the
prevention, investigation, and prosecution of "honor" crimes and attacks;

Collecting
and disseminating more reliable data on the number of "honor" crimes
committed and attempted each year;

Investigating
and prosecuting persons who threaten to harm female family members for
dishonoring the family;

Establishing
mandatory police training on crimes of domestic violence, and commissioning
experts in this area to modify police attitudes and teach relevant skills;

Securing
the cooperation of state and local authorities to ensure adequate economic
and political support for the training and its implications; and

Prohibiting
the police and forensic doctors from conducting or threatening to conduct
virginity exams of women without their informed consent (consent given
with the full knowledge of the purpose and risks of the procedure and the
alternatives).

Increase judicial responsiveness to
the problem of "honor" crimes by:

Providing
training and instruction to judges on the narrow limits of the "fury"
defense;

Providing
specialized training for certain prosecutors in each region to try cases
of violence against women, including "honor" crimes.These prosecutors should be responsible
for handling cases of violence against women in all the trial courts in
their district;and

Training
prosecutors responsible for cases of violence against women to eliminate
gender discrimination in the handling of these cases and to recognize the
serious and criminal nature of gender-based violence, including "honor"
crimes.

Provide refuge for women threatened
with "honor" killing by:

Creating
adequate and accessible shelters for victims of domestic violence,
including for women who have been the victims of "honor" crimes or who are
at risk of such violence, and their dependent children;

Making
residence at such shelters a strictly voluntary option for women;

Ensuring
that the shelters do not function as remand homes or serve any custodial,
punitive, or reformatory purpose; and

Ensuring
that programs at the shelters provide legal assistance and counseling
services for women.

Increase information services to
women at risk by:

Helping
to establish and widely publicize telephone hotlines for women victims of
violence in all major cities, operated by trained staff who can offer
basic counseling and refer women to specialized service providers and
shelters.

Enhance overall government response
and public education on "honor" crimes by:

Maintaining
reliable national statistics on the incidence, nature, and circumstances
of "honor" killings and other types of violence against women, including
rates of prosecution, conviction, and sentencing-specifically the nature
of punishment.

To
the United Nations

The
secretary-general of the United Nations and the United Nations high
commissioner for human rights should ensure that all United Nations
agencies operating in Jordan pay particular attention to the issue of
violence against women and develop programs and strategies designed to
curb these abuses and promote accountability; and

The
United Nations Development Program, in conjunction with the Jordanian
government and nongovernmental organizations, should design and implement
service programs for women victims of sexual and other violence, including
legal literacy, legal aid, counseling, shelter, and job training programs.

To the World Bank, Other International Lending
Institutions, and Governments

Given the high priority that the World Bank has put on
addressing human development and social protection in Jordan (as per the recent
Country Assistance Strategy), the Bank is particularly well-situated to promote
constructive and sustainable reforms, to assist in meeting the needs of women
victims of violence, and to improve women's status in Jordanian society.

In the
next reassessment of its Country Assistance Strategy, the World Bank
should give explicit priority to developing an effective policy on sexual
and domestic violence. Sustainable development would be enhanced by
progress on women's rights to equality and freedom from sexual and
domestic violence are protected.Bilateral donors participating in the next consultative group
annual donor meeting convened by the World Bank should also press these
concerns;

The
World Bank should explore possibilities for pilot projects in conjunction
with existing nongovernmental organizations aimed at assisting and
protecting rural and urban women from gender-based violence; and

International
lending institutions should make it a priority to provide financial
support to nongovernmental organizations and the Jordanian government for
the provision of basic services for women victims of violence, including
medical care, counseling, and legal aid.

To the Donor Community

Bilateral donors, including Japan,
the European Union, and the United
States, should:

Use
their influence to encourage Jordan to adopt the
recommendations outlined above.They should raise the issue of the Jordanian government's
inadequate response to the problem of violence against women at high level
meetings and through their embassies in Jordan;

Provide
assistance for programs to provide basic services for women victims of
violence.These services should
include women's shelters, medical care, counseling, and legal aid, which
are necessary to encourage and enable women to come forward and seek
safety from and justice for domestic violence, including "honor"
crimes;

Support
programs that seek to review and reform existing laws to ensure that they
are consistent with Jordan's obligations under CEDAW and other
international human rights standards, do not discriminate on the basis of
sex or gender, and afford women and girls equality of access and opportunity;

Encourage
Jordan
to repeal article 340 and to restrict article 98 of the penal code from
being used as a defense for crimes of "honor"; and

Provide
funds to the Jordanian government to train police, prosecutors, doctors,
and judges to eliminate gender bias in handling cases of violence against
women.

This report would not have been possible without the
assistance of numerous individuals in Jordan including Asma Khader; Rana
Husseini; Reem Abu Hassan; and

the Office of Her Majesty, Queen Rania, especially Diala S.
Al-Alami.

We would like to express our deep gratitude to the brave
women incarcerated in the Jweideh Women's Correctional and Rehabilitation
Centre in Amman,
deprived of their freedom for no reason other than being related to murderous
men, who are themselves walking free. They were willing to tell us of their
plight in the hope that our report might play a part in their release.

The Women's Rights Division gratefully acknowledges the
support of the Dobkin Family Foundation, the Moriah fund, the Oak Foundation,
the Streisand Foundation, the Schooner Foundation, and the members of the
Advisory Committee of the Women's Rights Division.

[3]Reem M. Abuhassan, "Violence Against Women in
Jordan,"
private paper on file with Human Rights Watch. The author is program
coordinator for the Family Empowerment Program of the government-endorsed
National Council for Family Affairs. Her research is based on police and other
data from the late 1990s.

[4]
Yusuf Qardawi, The Lawful and Prohibited in Islam, trans. Hammad,
(American Trust Publications) p.150, quoted in Ghazi bin Muhammad, "The Tribes
of Jordan," a 1999 monograph provided by the Jordanian Embassy (copy on file at
Human Rights Watch). The author is a member of the Jordanian royal family.

[5]
Fadia Faqir, "Intrafamily Femicide in Defense of Honour: The Case of Jordan," Third World Quarterly, vol.22, no.1,
(2001), p.74.

[9]
Human Rights Watch interview with Minister of Justice Farisi Nabulsi, Amman, July 16, 2003. The minister of justice
insisted to Human Rights Watch that this provision did not discriminate against
women, but rather was a "demographic measure" to address the problem of the
large Palestinian population.If this is
the purpose of the law, the policy is discriminatory on the basis both of
gender and of national origin.

[10]See
Taqrir Wadih al-Mar'a al-Urduniyya:al-Dhimughrafiyya, al-Musharaka al-Iqtisadiyya, al-Musharaka
al-Siyasiyya, wa al-`Unf dhidh al-Mar'a [Status of Jordanian Women: Demography,
Economic Participation, Political Participation and Violence against Women]
prepared by UNIFEM in cooperation with the Department of Statistics and the
Jordanian National Commission for Women. Chapter 4 on Violence against Women
includes statistics on the prevalence of gender-based violence in Jordanbased on studies carried out
by the Family Protection Unit. The report was released on March 14,
2004.

[11]
See, for example, Reem M. Abuhassan, "Violence Against Women in Jordan,"
private paper on file with Human Rights Watch. The author is program
coordinator for the Family Empowerment Program of the government-endorsed
National Council for Family Affairs. Her research is based on police and other
data from the late 1990s.

[12]The
former United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, Radhika
Coomaraswamy, examined "honor" crimes in 2002 in her report on Cultural
Practices in the Family that are Violent towards Women. According to the
Special Rapporteur, "By controlling women's sexuality and reproduction, they
become the custodians of cultural and ethnic purity...The woman's body is
considered to be the 'repository of family honour.'Alarmingly, the number of honour killings is
on the rise as the perception of what constitutes honour and what damages it
widens." See "Report of the Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, its
Causes and Consequences, Ms. Radhika Coomaraswamy, submitted in accordance with
in accordance with Commission on Human Rights resolution 2001/49,"
(Fifty-eighth session), U.N Document E/CN.4/2002/83,
January
31, 2002.

[13]
In the late 1990s, "honor" killings accounted for more than two-thirds of all
homicides reported among Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.In 1997, "roughly four hundred women were killed for honor in Yemen.
In 1999, over a thousand Pakistani women were killed for this cause."Iraq
and Iran
do not keep relevant statistics, though "honor" killings are thought to be
frequent in those countries. See Matthew
A.Goldstein, "The Biological Roots of Heat of Passion Crimes and
Honor Killings," Politics and the Life Sciences, September 2002,
available at http://216.239.39.104/search?q=cache:8DuuYyAmfhcJ:www.puaf.umd.edu/faculty/papers/Sprinkle/PUAF_650_Sprinkle/04a_Goldstein.pdf+jordanian+penal+code+article+99&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
(retrieved April 5, 2004)

[17]
The UNDP Human Development Report 2000 noted "gender empowerment measure values
are lowest in Egypt, Jordan and Niger."See Francesca Ciriaci, "Jordan in lower half of UNDP's
human development scale," The Jordan
Times, June 30 - July 1,
2000. In her keynote speech at the launch of the
report, Queen Rania said, "While our progress in the fields of human
development is reflected in the report, it does not exempt us from our
responsibility to generate more effort in this regard, especially in areas
relating to the rights of women and their roles in development."Available at http://www.jordanembassyus.org/06302000001.htm
(retrieved March 17, 2004).

[21]
Queen Rania spoke out against "honor" killings on French television in November
1999, and the Jordanian National Commission for Women, headed by Princess
Basma, was the first government-appointed body to recommend the cancellation of
article 340 of the penal code.

[23]
Nasser, Belbeisi and Atiyat, UNIFEM/WHO, "Violence Against Women in Jordan:
Demographic Characteristics of Victims and Perpetrators," December 1998, p.
18.The study broke down types and
proportions of violence nationwide and analyzed three years, 1995-97.

[28]
Human Rights Watch interview with Sabr Yassin Rawashdeh, prosecutor general, Amman, July 15, 2003.Journalist Lima Nabeel told Human Rights
Watch of a death recorded as a suicide which she believed was likely a murder.
The deceased's sister said her father and brother had poisoned the deceased but
the police refused to reopen the investigation. Human Rights Watch interview
with Lima Nabeel, journalist, Amman,
July 13, 2003.

[29]Rana Husseini,
"Crimes of Honor," Al-Raida, vol. 17, no. 89 (Spring 2000), p. 21.These
women are held in "protective custody" in the Jweideh Women's
Correctional and Rehabilitation Centre in Amman,
the only female prison in the country. Although they are housed in a separate
section of the prison, these women take their meals and participate in
vocational training with the other prison inmates.

[30]
Human Rights Watch interview with Asma Khader, attorney and human rights
activist,Amman, July 11, 2003. In October 2003, Asma Khader
became minister of state and government
spokesperson.

[42]
The forensic doctor who conducted the autopsy noted that the dead woman had had
a recent early birth or abortion.When
he learned there was no husband, he concluded it had been an abortion. The
abortion doctor was located, prosecuted, and convicted for the illegal
procedure.The police never pursued the
logic, however, which was clear to the general prosecutor that if she had had
an abortion, the woman had probably been murdered by her family.

[45] Human
Rights Watch interview with General Tahseen H. Shurdom, director general,
Public Security Directorate, Amman,
July 16, 2003.Human Rights Watch suggested to him that
arresting and detaining such a man might change the culture of impunity that
exists in Jordan.His response was, "[Jordan] is freer than all of its
neighbors," and "We have big responsibilities.We can't look at just fifteen crimes."

[46]
These four women's names have been changed to protect them from reprisals.
Human Rights Watch interviewed each woman separately on July 15, 2003.No prison officials were present.

[50]
Administrative governors have the power to place women in prison for their
protection and to authorize their release.

[51]Article 340 as amended by Temporary Law
no. 86 of 2001 reads as follows:

1. There shall benefit from the mitigating excuse (Uthur Mukhafif) whosoever surprises his
wife or one of his ascendants or descendents in the crime of adultery or in an
unlawful bed, and kills her immediately or kills the person fornicating with
her or kills both of them or attacks her or both of them in an assault that
leads to death or wounding or injury or permanent disability.

2. Shall benefit from the same excuse the wife who
surprises her husband in the crime of adultery or in an unlawful bed in the
marital home and kills him immediately or kills the woman with whom he is
fornicating or kills both of them or attacks him or both of them in an assault
that leads to death or wounding or injury or permanent disability.

3. The right of lawful defence shall not be permitted in
regard to the person who benefits from this excuse nor shall the provisions of
"aggravated circumstances" (Thuruf Mushaddida) apply.

[52]
Rana Husseini, "'Crimes of Honor': One Year In, Amendments to Article 340 Appear
to Have Made Little Difference," The Jordan Times, December 22, 2002 available at http://www.amanjordan.org/english/daily_news/wmprint.php?ArtID=570
(retrieved July 18, 2003).
The exemption clause was repealed in 2001.

[56]
The Council of Ministers is responsible before the elected House of Deputies.
It is the "highest arm of the state" and "presides over and controls the
government through ministers, heads of statutory bodies attached tothe
prime minister, administrative governors and local government councils." See
http://www.jordanembassyus.org/governme.htm#THE%20CABINET (retrieved March 17,
2004).

[57]According to the head of the Islamic Action
Front party, which boycotted the 1997 elections and consequently was not
represented in government at the time, Parliament rejected the change in 1999
because article 340 "wasn't the problem."He said the issue was "the social custom to protect honor," and a
legislative campaign was beside the point.Human Rights Watch interview with Abdul Latif Arabiyat,
secretary-general, Islamic Action Front party, Amman, July 13, 2003.

[62]
Ghazi bin Muhammad, "The Tribes of Jordan," monograph, 1999, p. 443-45.The author is a member of the Jordanian royal
family. The monograph was provided by the Jordanian Embassy (copy on file at
Human Rights Watch).

[63]
The statute may be translated as follows: "He who commits a crime in a state of
great fury resulting from an unlawful and dangerous act on the part of the
victim shall benefit from the extenuating excuse."Human Rights Watch interview with Asma
Khader, lawyer and human rights activist, Amman,
July 12, 2003. In
October 2003, Asma Khader became minister of state and government spokesperson.

[64]
Human Rights Watch opposes the infliction of capital punishment in all
circumstances because of its inherent cruelty.

[67]
See, for example, "Father alleged to have strangled daughter to death," The
Jordan Times,December
22, 2002. In this case, a father killed his daughter who had
reappeared after a five-month absence, claiming he killed her in a "fit of
fury."

[94]Qarar
923: Nitham Dar Himayyat al-'Usra Lisanat 2004 [Decision 923: The
Establishment of a Shelter for the Protection of the Family in 2004] on file
with Human Rights Watch.Procedurally,
the legislation will come into force thirty days after its publication in the
Official Gazette.

[100]
The client is a young unmarried Christian woman whose Muslim boyfriend, unlike
any other male in her milieu, is willing to marry her despite the fact that she
is not a virgin.Her brother says she
has so disgraced the family that he cannot find a bride, and he threatens to
kill her. She gets some moral support from her mother. The church bishop reportedly
has refused to intervene.

[102]
According to an official website: "The
governorates are an extension of the central government, and are supervised by
the Ministry of the Interior. Governors enjoy wide administrative authority,
and in specific cases they exercise the powers of ministers."Available at http://www.jordanembassyus.org/governme.htm#THE%20EXECUTIVE%20BRANCH
(retrieved March 17, 2004).

[103]
The Prevention of Crimes Act of 1954 gives the governors the power to detain
"without bond" individuals who constitute a "danger to society."The Royal Commission on Human Rights has
called for limitations on the power of the governors but the government has
opposed it. Human Rights Watch interview with Reem Abu Hassan, human rights
lawyer, Amman, July 16, 2003.

[107]
An administrative detainee is incarcerated by order of an administrative
governor for reasons of public safety, either because he deems her a probable
recidivist or a danger to society or for her own protection.Fifty-one of the inmates were awaiting trial,
and fifty-six had been sentenced. Human Rights Watch interview with Maj. Han
Afgani, the Jweideh Women's Correctional and Rehabilitation Centre, Amman, July 15, 2003.

[108]
Human Rights Watch interview with Asma Khader, attorney and human rights
activist,Amman, July 12, 2003. In October 2003, Asma Khader
became minister of state and government
spokesperson.

[111] A
woman who had served her prison term refused to leave prison if she could not
have custody of her daughter who had been born outside of marriage-which is not
permitted in Jordan.The king obtained a stipend for her and
escorted the woman and her daughter out of prison. Human Rights Watch
interviewwith Asma Khader, attorney and
human rights activist,Amman, July 12, 2003. In October 2003, Asma
Khader became minister of state and
government spokesperson.

[123]
Five current and former judges from the High Criminal Court agreed that this
was a sufficient "bad act" under Art. 98. Human Rights Watch interview with
Ibrahim Abu Taleb, presiding judge; Mohamad Ibrahim, judge; Najeh Al-Diat,
judge; Azam Obeidat, judge; Mohmad Abu Roman, public prosecutor for the High
Criminal Court,Amman, July 16, 2003

[133] These
include the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against
Women (CEDAW), ratified July 1992; International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights (ICCPR), ratified May 1975; Convention on the Rights of the
Child, ratified May 1991; International Covenant on Economic, Social and
Cultural Rights (ICESCR), ratified May 1975; Convention against Torture, and
Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, ratified November
1991.

[136]
See Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women,
article 2 and ICCPR, articles 3 and 26.See also Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 7.

[137] ICCPR, article
7.article 16 of the Convention against Torture requires states parties to
prevent cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, or punishment when committed by
or with the acquiescence of a public official. The Convention against Torture
further obliges states to take specific steps-education, monitoring, complaint
procedures, investigations-to prevent such treatment.

[142]
ICCPR, article 9. This right, although traditionally applied to conditions of
arrest or detention, has been expanded over time to cover non-custodial
situations. For example, CEDAW's Recommendation No. 19 defined sex
discrimination to include gender-based violence, regardless of where it takes
place, which impairs or nullifies women's rights and freedoms under
international law. The committee stated, "These rights and freedoms include, inter
alia . . . the right to liberty and security of person."